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  SARRA MANNING

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2009 Sarra Manning

  The right of Sarra Manning to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Extract from Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster © 1905,

  reproduced with kind permission from The Provost and Scholars of

  King’s College, Cambridge and The Society of Authors as the Literary

  Representative of the Estate of E.M. Forster.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may

  only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,

  with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of

  reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued

  by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2009

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 5683 6

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to reproducing

  copyright material. The author and publisher will be glad to rectify any

  omissions at the earliest opportunity.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  chapter fourteen

  chapter fifteen

  chapter sixteen

  chapter seventeen

  chapter eighteen

  chapter nineteen

  chapter twenty

  chapter twenty-one

  chapter twenty-two

  chapter twenty-three

  chapter twenty-four

  chapter twenty-five

  chapter twenty-six

  chapter twenty-seven

  chapter twenty-eight

  chapter twenty-nine

  chapter thirty

  chapter thirty-one

  chapter thirty-two

  chapter thirty-three

  chapter thirty-four

  chapter thirty-five

  chapter thirty-six

  chapter thirty-seven

  chapter thirty-eight

  chapter thirty-nine

  chapter forty

  chapter forty-one

  chapter forty-two

  chapter forty-three

  Dedicated to the memory of Kate Jones,

  who mentored both book and author.

  thanks

  To Gordon and Joanne Shaw, Sarah Bailey and Kate Hodges for all their long-suffering support. My aunt, Lesley Lawson, for shared writerly woes. And Pavel Zoubok of the Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York for allowing his brains to be picked.

  My agent, Karolina Sutton, Laura Sampson and all at Curtis Brown. Catherine Cobain, Harriet Evans and Sara Porter at Headline.

  ‘I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it - and I’m sure I can’t tell you whether the fate’s good or evil. I don’t die - I don’t fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I’m just not there.’

  Where Angels Fear to Tread, E. M. Forster

  chapter one

  ‘I just don’t love you,’ he said.

  It was the most brutal dumping Grace had ever had. And she’d had a few.

  But if Grace was being honest with herself, which didn’t happen often, then it wasn’t a complete surprise. She’d seen the light gradually dim in Liam’s eyes like a torch with dying batteries. He’d begun to look at her in this bemused way, as if the actual dating was a major letdown after the months they’d spent skirting around each other and snogging furiously as they waited for the night bus. He’d even stopped holding her hand when they crossed the street, so Grace didn’t need to be a cartographer to read the signs: being dumped was inevitable.

  But she’d never expected it to happen on her birthday. In Liberty’s. Right by the new season’s Marc Jacobs bags.

  ‘You’re finishing with me?’ Grace clarified, her voice metronome-steady. ‘On my birthday?’

  Finally Liam found the balls to look her in the eyes, before his gaze skittered away to rest on the tomato-red, outsized Hobo she’d been admiring before he turned up and crunched the day under his tatty Converses.

  Grace should have known better than to arrive at Liberty’s all quivery and expectant that maybe, just maybe, Liam had finally got his shit together and was going to buy her some serious designer real estate as a birthday present. She wasn’t picky; she’d have settled for a key fob or a marked-down hairslide.

  ‘I wasn’t going to split up with you. Not today, anyway. But then, I don’t know . . . I just saw you standing there and I couldn’t hold it in any longer,’ Liam said heavily, shoulders slumping under his leather jacket. It was too hot for leather jackets even if you were a wannabe indie rock star in your very wildest dreams.

  Grace had often wanted to tell Liam that writing whiny mope-rock anthems for teenage boys to listen to in their breaks from wanking and GCSE revision wasn’t something to aspire to, and now she watched with satisfaction as little beads of sweat sprang up on Liam’s pretty face even though it was cool and closeted in Liberty’s. That was one of the reasons why it was Grace’s happy place. There was something civilised and genteel about the thick wood panelling that hushed the merciless, hurrying world outside. Well, that and the rail upon rail of pretty frocks, the spindly shoes that looked too delicate to walk in and the beauty hall where she wanted her ashes scattered when she died. Except Liam had just gone and trashed her happy place as well as ruining her birthday.

  ‘Why? Why are you splitting up with me? Should I mention that it’s my birthday again, or is that getting boring? Jesus, Liam, what is wrong with you?’ Grace’s voice was slowly edging towards the red end of the dial marked ‘hysterical’, but really - extenuating circumstances.

  Liam gingerly touched her arm as he gnawed on his pouty bottom lip because she was making this harder than he’d expected. Generally, Grace was the kind of girl he could leave in a corner and not have to worry too much about.

  ‘Gracie, c’mon,’ he said helplessly, running a hand through dirty-blond hair, his eyes shutting tight. ‘I was going to wait a few days, but it all just got too much. Things aren’t good between us, y’know?’

  ‘Is it something I did?’ Grace asked, taking pity on him and scrabbling in her bag for her Miu Miu shades to shield her accusatory glare. ‘What did I do wrong?’

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. We just don’t fit.’ For the greatest undiscovered singer/songwriter of his generation, Liam was being annoyingly vague. Grace could see he was searching wildly for an excuse. ‘Your hair,’ he mumbled finally. ‘I don’t think you should have dyed it black.’

  ‘You’re
splitting up with me because of my hair?’

  They both knew that it had only five per cent to do with Grace’s hasty decision to go from honey blond to blue black after watching a series of Bettie Page shorts at a Burlesque all-dayer. It was meant to have signalled a new, edgier Grace but it had just made her look peaky and stained her Cath Kidston towels.

  ‘No,’ Liam prevaricated. ‘Yes - I don’t know. Look, we can still go out tonight and hook up or whatever, but I just don’t think we’re heading anywhere serious, so what’s the point of pretending any more? But I got you a card - here.’ He proffered a creased pink envelope like it was all done and they could just move along because there was nothing to see here. She was good for a ‘hook-up or whatever’, but she was never going to make his heart go pitter-patter.

  ‘You’re an arsehole,’ she hissed, voice quivering with the threat of tears. ‘You could have picked any other day and cobbled together some lame excuse but instead you do it now, here, and you don’t even have the decency to be screwing someone behind my back.’

  ‘Don’t make a scene, Gracie . . .’ Liam said in a shocked whisper.

  ‘I’ll make a bloody scene if I want to.’

  Liam was shuffling his feet like he was about to bolt but Grace wasn’t done with him yet. Not when she could shove him square in the chest with two puny fists because he really, really deserved it. Liam rocked back on his heels, arms pin-wheeling to keep his balance, and knocked the Marc Jacobs bag off its Perspex plinth.

  It tottered for one terrible second before dangling forlornly from its security chain and setting off a shrieking alarm, which would have made Grace clamp her hands over her ears if she wasn’t hunting in her pockets for a ratty tissue. She could feel her mascara slowly descending as tears began to trickle down each cheek.

  ‘You want a reason for me to break up with you?’ Liam snarled, deigning to lower his head so he could get all up in Grace’s face. ‘This is a reason to dump you. You can be so fucking embarrassing.’

  After that pithy summing-up, he gave the hapless Marc Jacobs bag a vicious punch before stalking away.

  Grace carefully rubbed her thumbs under her sunglasses, not surprised that they came away streaked with black gunk as a bevy of shop assistants hurried over. Usually, Liberty’s staff could be relied upon to be discreet yet friendly. Not like in Harvey Nicks where they called her ‘Madam’ in a condescending manner as she fingered dresses that she couldn’t possibly afford. Mind you, they didn’t seem quite so friendly now.

  Grace had already been dumped, seen her boss taking the new, suck-up intern out for coffee and had an email from her mother, all of which added up to make the worst birthday ever. Being barred for life from Liberty’s would put the icing on the cake. A mythical cake though, because no one back in the office had any plans to take her to Patisserie Valerie this afternoon.

  She swallowed hard to dispel the sob that was rising up her throat. But the next one and the one after that were all cued up and Grace’s frantic gulps made her start coughing and spluttering and—

  ‘Stop crying,’ someone behind her said sharply. ‘You’ll make everything worse.’ The voice had an arm, which curved around Grace’s shoulders and ushered her towards the exit. Both his tone and grip left no room for resistance. ‘Let’s get out of here before they have you tried for crimes against expensive handbags.’

  There were feet too, in highly polished brown brogues. Still coughing, Grace watched them walk alongside her scuffed ballet flats as she was steered past the flower stall and towards Regent Street. Her bag was banging against her hip with every step and this was just ridiculous - letting herself be frogmarched out of Liberty’s, eyes watering now rather than tearing, by some nameless, faceless man who was cutting a swathe through the jostling crowds as if he was going into battle. Grace slowed down as a prelude to dodging into the oncoming traffic to escape but was propelled forward by a decisive hand.

  As he delivered her safely to the other side of Regent Street, Grace ground to a halt and tugged on his sleeve. ‘I’m all right now, thank you,’ she said, sniffing to get rid of the snot - she’d never felt so gross and disgusting as she did at that moment.

  She glanced up then, because curiosity trumped tear-streaked vanity every time. He had a thin, clever face that was all angles, blue eyes creasing up against the glare of the sun slanting between the buildings; lips quirked in something that wasn’t quite a smile. Dark-blond hair peaked into little tufts that rippled in the slight breeze. It was easier to focus on his suit: cream, summer-weight wool by Dries Van Noten if Grace wasn’t mistaken. And Grace never was when it came to matters of fashion.

  ‘You don’t look all right,’ he noted crisply in etched-glass, public-school English. ‘You look as if you need a drink.’

  He was old-fashioned looking, Grace decided. Not just the suit, which made him look as though he should be taking the air in one of those fifties movies set on the French Riviera, but as if he was the second male lead in one of those same films. Not matinee-idol handsome enough to get the girl, but good enough to be the best friend of the one who got the girl. Or the arch nemesis of the one who got the girl, who had his comeuppance ten minutes before the end credits began to roll.

  Also, he was old. Or older. Late thirties, early forties, which made this whole situation even weirder than it already was.

  ‘Look, I’m really sorry about causing a scene and thank you for getting me out of there, but I’m OK now. Really.’

  ‘Where shall we go?’ he mused, looking around. ‘Which street are we on?’

  ‘Conduit, and I can’t—’ But she could - for the simple reason that his arm was back around her shoulders and he was setting off with a long-limbed stride so she had to scurry to keep up or get dragged underfoot. ‘I have to get back to work,’ she panted. ‘My boss gets really pissy if I take longer than an hour for lunch.’

  ‘Really? He sounds very tiresome.’

  ‘He’s a she,’ Grace corrected him as she struggled to keep up with his long-limbed stride. She was being abducted, not to mention manhandled, in broad daylight, and wasn’t fighting or flighting. In fact, she was even glancing in the window of Moschino as she hurried past, but obviously the shock of being dumped and now being kidnapped had made her cognitive thought processes misfire.

  ‘Come on, chop chop,’ the man said, pulling Grace round one corner and then another until he came to a halt outside an unmarked black door and started tapping a security code into the keypad. The fight or flight part of Grace’s brain was finally firing up and telling her to run screaming for the hills or to the nearest police station. She took a tentative step to the right but his hand, which was still on her shoulder, tightened. ‘Through here,’ he said.

  There was a buzzing sound and the man slowly pushed the door open and Grace was ushered over the threshold into a dark space, walls painted a rich ruby red, polished wood under her feet and a large set of doors slightly ajar to the right. No way was she going any further than right here where she stood, unless it was back out the way she’d come in.

  Someone was walking towards her, a smiling woman in a ruffly black dress and pinny, which brought to mind Laura Ashley - if she’d ever had a Goth period. ‘Good to see you again, sir,’ she said to the man standing behind Grace. ‘Are you here for lunch?’

  ‘Just drinks, I think. Maybe afternoon tea,’ he said, finally taking his hand off Grace’s shoulder and stepping forward. His sleeve brushed Grace’s arm and she flinched.

  The front door finally shut with a soft but decisive thud so she had the sensation that she was cocooned in this dark red place, where people only talked in low, soothing tones as if anything louder wouldn’t be tolerated. It was strangely comforting and suddenly, inexplicably, Grace started to cry again.

  Or cry properly, because the tears in Liberty’s had just been the warm-up act and this was the main event. Being abducted had been a great diversion, but it was still her birthday and she’d still just been dumped and h
er life was still sucking beyond all measure. Grace felt her chest shuddering, and then the sobs that she’d managed to mute down ten minutes before were back for their encore presentation. They sounded like death rattles as they ricocheted off the walls.

  ‘Oh dear,’ the man said softly, cupping Grace’s elbow and steering her carefully down the corridor, the black-clad, ruffly woman bringing up the rear. ‘I’m sure he’s not worth crying over. Magda will take you somewhere to get your tear ducts under control, while I order you a glass of champagne.’

  Grace shrugged, or would have, if her shoulders weren’t heaving, and let herself be led through a small side door and up a narrow, curving staircase. The place was like a very red, very twisty rabbit warren. ‘Bathroom’s through there,’ she was told in that same modulated murmur.

  Diving for the nearest stall, Grace sank down on the loo so she could finally, properly, get her weep on.

  The attendant averted her eyes as Grace emerged, as if she hadn’t heard the muffled howling coming from the cubicle, and dabbed furiously at the shiny chrome taps as Grace washed her hands and stared despondently at her reflection in the mirror. There were dirty grey rivulets running down her cheeks, which she scrubbed away before evaluating the raw material carefully, a tube of tinted moisturiser poised and at the ready.